KARACHI: Top officials of Sindh Revenue Board (SRB), Qasim International Container Terminal (QICT) and M/s Maersk Pakistan (Pvt) Ltd are allegedly involved in country’s biggest ports and shipping scandal worth billions. SRB’s active connivance with QICT and Maersk is suspected as it is not taking any action against these companies for evading billions of rupees sales tax.
Sources said QICT Pakistan Ltd. is declaring only a small portion of the sales in SRB but the latter is not taking any action against the former even after so much coverage by the media. The QICT is not declaring a major portion of sales while they declare their full sales in other agencies/institutions of Pakistan where they have to take benefit of the sales like repatriate the amount. A mere comparison of the amounts of their sales declared in various agencies/institutions of Pakistan with those declared in SRB would expose the tens of billions that they have not declared in SRB merely to evade sales tax, sources added.
Sources said the alleged nexus of some Customs staff, port terminals like QICT along with its parent company DP World, Port Qasim and shipping lines like Maersk Line along with its agent Maersk Pakistan Private Limited, including its owners, managers & staff and a few officials of the SRB is making illegal money through malpractice defrauding the SRB of hundreds of billions of rupees.
Shipping company agent Maersk Pakistan Private Limited is reportedly providing shipping and other services in Pakistan to various importers and exporters so they are liable to pay service tax to SRB at the rate of 13% as per SRB Notification No. 3-4/20/2017. The Commissioner II of the Sindh Revenue Board was bound by the Notification No. 3-4/20/2017 to collect sales tax on services from the shipping lines as mentioned in point 15 of the table which is also available on the official website of SRB. But the Commissioner II and other high-ups of the SRB kept silence over the issue for years and inflicted huge losses on the exchequer which shows their malafide intentions and active connivance in this whole scam, sources added.
It is pertinent to mention here that Centre for Investigative Journalism (CIJ), Pakistan even informed Sindh Revenue Board (SRB) regarding losses of hundreds of billions of rupees in terms of unpaid sales tax by shipping lines like Maersk Pakistan Pvt Ltd and the QICT in connivance with the concerned officers/officials of the SRB who are still using delaying tactics because of their malafide intentions and personal financial gains.
On the other hand, a complaint received by the NAB demanded legal action for recoveries of amounts looted and recovering losses worth billions to the national exchequer per year while also stopping such further losses from 65 accused persons of these companies including Søren Skou, Claus V. Hemmingsen, Søren Toft, Vincent Clercp, Morten H. Engelstoft, others of Maersk Line; Arslan Khan, Gazanfar Khan, Raheel Salim, Maqsood Ul Hasan Khan, Fuad Khan, Hasan Faraz, Shakeel Masih, Omer Khan, Ali Jawad Alvi, Zafar Iqbal, Ayesha Chowdhry, Zahid Hussain, Salman Ahmad, Aamir Ali, Umais Aziz Khan, Mohammed Naeem, Farheen Mahmud, Mubasshar Iqbal, Affaq Syed, Syed Mohammad Abbas Jafri, Muhammad Tanveer Sharif, Salman Ateeq, Hamza Haq, Ziad Mahboob, Aamir Ibrahim, Yasir Saeed Khan, Amal Sadiq Dawood, Effat Mehmood, Maria Urooj, Zain Warsi, Mehreen Zulfiqar, Awais Saleem, Zafar Iqbal, Syed Osman Iqbal Zaidi, Anum Yaqub, Fahad Ali, Obaid Iqbal, Zahid Hussain, Muhammad Ali Qureshi, Danish Siddiqui, Amir Arif, Arshad Ayub, Syed Mudassir Ali, Syed Hammad Hussain, Ayesha Qadri, Sheikh Samiullah, others of M/S Maersk Pakistan Private Limited; Yuvraj Narayan, Deepak Parekh, Robert Woods, Abdulla Ghobash, Mark Russell, Mohammed Saif Al Suwaidi, Nadya Abdulla Kamali, Mohammed Al Muallem, Suhail Al Banna, Rizwan Soomar, Mathew Leech, Abdulla Bin Damithan, Devang Mankodi, Rashid Abdulla, Mohammad Al Hashimy, Habibullah Khan, Nusrat Khan, Aly Khan, Junaid Zamir, Changaz Hassan Niazi, Farhan Mithani, Masoud Noori, Mohammad Al Mannaei, Omer Al Mohairi, Cyrus R Khursigara, Shahid Iqbal, Uzair Qureshi, Fasih Haider, Faraz Aziz, Abdul Aleem Mirza, Saad Zulfiqar and others of DP World/ QICT Ltd.
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